Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

Academy chain fights for right to name feeder schools

A secondary academy is fighting to give preference to children attending primary schools operated by its trust rather than admitting pupils from closer schools, prompting speculation that this could pave the way for a shake-up of academy admissions policies. Complaints were made to the Office for Schools Adjudicator (OSA) in August about the admissions policy […]

Finance app wins contest

Young entrepreneurs from Greenacre school for girls in Surrey have been crowned champions of a national United Learning app competition. The challenge tasked students across the multi-academy trust to design an educational app and then launch it online. And it was Financial Helper, a team of four from Greenacre, which beat more than 1,500 other […]

Julie Keller, Laura Fowler and David Ross

Julie Keller has stepped up from the deputy headship to lead Nottingham girls’ high school, a move that follows Sue Gorham’s retirement after 10 years at the helm. An advocate of single-sex education, Keller says she is determined to spread her support for girls’-only education and to empower her students to “break the glass ceiling” […]

How a charity can be effective

Philanthropists like giving to schools, says Angela Kail. But if the school system in England was ever straightforward for charities, it isn’t any more. Here’s a guide through the minefield Scan The Sunday Times Giving List, which names the UK’s top 200 philanthropists, and it quickly becomes clear that education is a priority for today’s […]

Walliams backs comedy prize

Comedians including David Walliams, Charlie Higson anad Kerry Howard, are encouraging secondary school pupils to become class clowns. But don’t fear, teachers, the campaign is for a new comedy writing competition launched by the BBC with the National Literacy Trust. There are three categories for 13 to 15-year-olds, including class joker, class act and class […]

Council faces £5.6m bill for free school

Hertfordshire county council has been forced to stump up cash for an expensive new free school or face a shortage of secondary school places, writes John Dickens. The councillors’ agreement follows a year’s delay on the new school and a government decision earlier this year to pull the plug on another free school project in […]

Tory shires rebel against plan for academies

Conservative councils are opposing the government’s academisation plans, adding their voices to a growing number of rebelling local authorities. Kent county council, the country’s largest Conservative-run education authority, unanimously voted last week to write to Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, to demand that she ditch her reforms. Conservative-run West Sussex county council soon followed, and […]

Academy head pilots super-size classes of 60

Super-size classes of 60 pupils with a single experienced teacher will be piloted next year by one of the country’s leading teacher training schools. South Farnham school in Surrey will employ a teacher on a starting salary of £45,000, plus two newly-qualified teachers and two teaching assistants, to run the classes. South Farnham is an […]

Ditched primary SATs will still set standards

Primary schools that carried out a now-defunct key stage 1 test must still provide their results to the government so they can be used to set expected standards. The Department for Education (DfE) ditched the spelling, punctuation and grammar tests for all year 2 pupils last week after it was discovered the material had been […]